Tezza

Yes, I think it was professionally recorded and edited, you can hear some tuning correction on the voice in quick step downs and the clarity and presence of the voice is amazing, reverb is nice. Then he probably did a number of attempts at doing the video overdub. It does not detract from the quality of his voice though, the range, control, emotion, choice of alternate notes, the delivery....all great. I am using it as a benchmark for my acoustic/vocal recordings. You don't usually hear voice and guitar alone presented with such quality.

His name is Joseph Vincent of Phillipino descent and is based in California USA. Have never heard of him before, has anyone? Just stumbled on it while surfing, beautiful acoustic guitar playing and incredible voice. The quality of the recording is top notch so I'm guessing he recorded in a studio and then this might be a over dubbed video. Please tell me it's an overdubbed video otherwise I will never pick up my Acoustic and sing again!!!! He does a lot of Jazzy type covers that I would love to do but thought it was not possible to pull off a convincing version of those particular songs on Acoustic. He's proven it can be done and very well.

Nice additions! thanks!

I am updating my monitors and was wondering if ribbon vs dome tweeters is a thing. Aside from the frequency and quality differences, I was also thinking about ear fatigue and tinnitus. If you have sensitive ears, or might be prone to tinnitus, are ribbon tweeters better than dome tweeters? Has anyone moved from dome to ribbon or vice versa, if so, what did you find?

I don't mind simple activation over the internet, I just have to put the broadband USB dongle in for 5 minutes and all done. I don't like the Steinberg dongle, it's annoying having some piece of hardware running in the background just so I can use the software. It hasn't caused any trouble and it's in the back so I don't see that continuously glowing red light but I would prefer the option of some sort of activation over the internet. It's no good for my laptop that I am taking on holiday. I wanted to take Cubase with me to work on some songs and also do some advanced training videos but that is not going to happen because I don't feel comfortable traveling with the dongle and it hanging out of my laptop. If I lose it, I don't know what would happen.

We must be on the same wavelength....

It's easy to cheat and engage in hopefulness by turning up the volume as the high frequency fades and listening to the hiss of your sound card.

I took this test this morning to see how high I can actually hear and it appeared to top out at about 13,768khz for me. I was a bit shocked. Does this mean everything I edit has a whole load of high frequency stuff that I cannot even hear? or is it my laptop sound card? aaarghh! If you choose to take the test, be prepared to turn the volume down as you go through the mid frequencies and do not turn the volume up loud when you can no longer hear the signal. --------------------------------------- Hearing Test in HD quality. Sinusoidal wave starting at 20 Hz frequency and going up to 20 kHz frequency. It's recommended that you listen to this using headphones. If you can't hear anything above 16000 Hertz it's probably because Youtube's audio compression cut off frequencies above 16kHz. Try watching in HD to get better audio quality. Update: Youtube no longer seems to cut of frequencies above 16kHz at least when encoding as opus audio stream. There is still lossy compression and there are visible distortions at high end of the spectrum (high frequencies). If you don't hear low frequencies it's your hardware! Most decent headphones should be able to play low frequencies, for loudspeakers check their specification. They could have frequency range (min) starting at 40Hz or 80Hz or in case of build in laptop/tablet speakers 120Hz or higher. For other end of the spectrum (high frequencies) it's more sophisticated. Again, it's best to listen using headphones, but you also need good Digital to Analog Converter (DAC). If your soundcard uses DSP processor it is best to turn it off and switch to "Stereo Direct" mode (if it offers such possibility). Also disable any modification to the original signal like equalizers or "bass boost" in your hardware/software. All these features modify original signal and might distort it to the point that high frequency components will be lost. If you have quality DAC and headphones/speakers and can't hear above certain frequency, then it's most likely your hearing. To be 100% sure ask someone with better hearing (someone younger). Generally, if children can hear it on the same hardware and you can't, it's above your hearing threshold.

I don't consider good quality sounds to be bloat, bad quality yes. You can always uninstall or choose not to install sounds but you can't do anything about the buckets of code inside the DAW.

How do they continue to find so many "new features" all the time. Anyone buying any DAW these days is already going to get something that will probably take them years to master and have everything you could possibly think of for music making. Surely there is a ceiling on how many more "new features" can be incorporated into a DAW or at least those features that would actually be useful to the home music maker. It's actually turning me off a bit. Everytime I see "new features" it says to me "more clutter" and "more complicated" and of course "more that can go wrong". Now if they said they were including some fantastic new megagig library or synth with really stellar sounds, that might be interesting.

I was just going through this today. Going on a trip in the caravan for a few weeks/months, wanted to take a DAW with me. I'm only taking the small 14 inch laptop. Can't take Cakewalk because it doesn't scale well on the screen, too much clutter, can't take Cubase because I don't want to stick a dongle in the laptop, just know it will get broken, stolen or lost or something. Can't take Studio One because I have version 3 which absolutely cannot edit midi in loop mode, stutters and farts. So it looks like Mixcraft will get the job although I don't like how it sets up my Kontakt instruments, which leaves Reaper and I don't like that name. Oddly, I also have Cubase Elements but I wouldn't want to go through the E licencing activation and it has restrictions. It's enough to drive me to a Mac and get Logic for the job. I doubt they will make any changes before my trip but you never know.

Not that I can think of. I bought mine off Ebay, they are all aftermarket knockoffs, however you want to be very clear that you are getting one specifically for your laptop and the bezel, the side plastic cover, is compatible with your laptop in shape and color. I seem to remember that some of them are better in this regard than others. I got one once that wasn't curved as well as the original in my laptop so it stuck out a little. I never had any problem with the functionality of them though, I used them for video editing.

Yes, I've used those on the Latitudes and Precisions, they work fine.

It depends on the laptop and what age it is but 17 inch laptops usually have at least 2 internal bays. I use the Latitudes and Precisions, not used an Inspiron. On my 17 inch precision, I could have had 3 internal drives plus the DVD drive converter to make it 4. But I only used 3.

Should be able to put at least 2 drives in that laptop I think.

Reid, have you had any support from Magix regarding your problems with Vegas? there's a few simple things that can cause instability with Vegas, also it can depend on your hard drive setup and your editing codec. I know there is a lot of stuff out there about crashes with Vegas but I wouldn't go just by that because Vegas is the most pirated software around and a lot of the complaints come from users using the cracked version of the software. In addition, with those using 4k there tends to be more complaints about video editors in general because it can be difficult to edit. If you do a search on "Adobe Premiere Crashing" or "Davinci Resolve crashing", you will see a few posts as well. But most of this is again, people trying to edit huge video files on badly setup computers and in codecs that are not necessarily native. You might get away with this for short videos but when you start using the thing 24/7 then changes might need to be made. It might be that your computer and your editing workflow needs to be set up differently now that you are doing more work. If your goal is to create Youtube videos then the requirements for that should be easy to set up. You don't need high data rate for that. If you were doing feature films or doco's etc then it would be different. Still, if your heart is set on trying something different it can't hurt to trial some others but they will have more hardware requirements than Vegas which can run on anything. It might be good to try the demos out and see if that fixes your crashing issues, if it doesn't then maybe attention should go towards set up. I wouldn't shell out the dollars though until you've proven that it is the software at fault and not something else or you could find yourself with a lighter wallet but the same problems.

It's not really for me, the lack of third party supported libraries turns me off. They are not cheap either. It's confusing as well, there are 4 different versions within the Halion ecosystem. They need to do something like a cut down version of Halion in Cubase Pro with an upgrade to the full version, get rid of that Halion Sonic SE rubbish. Which is why this is being suggested, it's no different to what NI do with their Komplete range. When your falling behind in product sales as opposed to your competitors, you need to try something different. I don't agree that their current position in relation to the sales of Halion etc is not related to their marketing plan. I really don't like Steinberg's confusing marketing and registration processes, or their lack of ticket support depending on which country you live in, or their backward web page for my internet account (looks like something from the 90's). Also, the choice between the annoying dongle or the unfathomable soft E licenser. I like Cubase but that is where my relationship with Steinberg ends. That groove agent is another unintuitive weird thing. I'll stick with Battery and the NI stuff and I also now prefer dedicated third party specific instruments, so they are being bought and used more rather than the bundles with a particular company. They have a lot of work to do to catch up with competitors like Presonus who have a fantastic web page for your account, a simple registration process and worldwide, quick, ticketed support. However for my uses, Cubase is better than Studio One at the moment.

I don't mind Warren Huart, he always makes me feel so marvellous. For some reason he always reminds me of Elvis Presley, I don't know why, he doesn't look like him and the accents wrong but whenever I am watching his videos there just seems to be something Elvisy about him. It's a big plug for Cakewalk though if he's churning out a video about it.

From what I can find out, it is a multi timbral synthesizer with patches from the 2000's, with the patches labelled "VX" being considered the "good ones", from a Yamaha Motif 2010. A bit dated if you ask me. I don't know if it can actually play wav based sample libraries or not. It's main function as I can see is to act like TTS does in Cakewalk. For me that means being a GM midi player for when you download midi songs and open them up in Cubase. I've used it for that and Cubase does a good job using Halion Sonic SE to set up the instruments on any GM compatible midi files you download. Then you can move the midi track data over to better sounding individual instrument libraries if you have those. As a GM midi player it doesn't do a bad job, marginally better than my old Kawai K1. It cops a bit of flack over it's sounds on the net with many describing it as a 80's or 90's synth. It doesn't have any other purpose on my system, I think I may have retained a couple of the sounds for some of the instruments on my GM midi downloaded edited productions, I can't remember. Looking for libraries or patches for the Halion Sonic SE leads to a few dead pages, experiments and a group of users circulating patches. Whether it can play Halion libraries, I don't know. Halion is a different beast altogether, that is like Kontakt or East west etc so there is every reason to believe that the sound quality in Halion libraries would be up there with the rest or better. I don't know though because I've never used Halion. If Halion Sonic SE could play Halion libraries and it could also be used in other DAW's outside Cubase without problem then there might be a better reason for having it but none of this is made clear. What restrictions would be placed on those libraries even if Halion Sonic SE could play them.

Yes, there is an opportunity for them to give a scaled down Halion in Cubase and then to provide an upgrade path to the full version. That would be sensible marketing to pull people in the direction of Halion. I agree 100%, it is a chance left squandered and absolute complete stupidity. You miss the point completely. This is an opportunity for Steinberg to market Halion better by including a cut down version in Cubase (with some half decent sounds) and then providing an upgrade path to entice you to upgrade to the full version. A bit like NI does with Komplete. Providing the select version free with various hardware and then providing a discount to upgrade to full. It would be good marketing but Steinberg does not seem to care about promoting it's sound libraries that much which is why Halion falls behind other library manufacturers. It is stupid marketing. I spent a couple of hours with Halion Sonic SE and realized why I was not using it. The truth is, the sounds just are not that great. Plastiky with cheesy reverb splattered over everything, that sometimes you can't get rid of. So rather than Halion Sonic SE enticing me to move towards Halion, it's actually a turn off of all things Halion. I did expect more from Steinberg in the sounds department, it was a bit of a letdown. I don't use their Prologue or Retrologue either. I would like to think that the full Halion sounds better than the Halion Sonic SE but with other libraries being so plentiful and sounding so much better than Halion Sonic SE, why would I bother to find out.

Are the Klangs worthwhile?

If they had an upgrade path from halion sonic se that came with Cubase then I might be enticed. However, all I see on their forums are complaints about the lack of an upgrade path from SE and nothing being done about it. As a consequence I don't even use Halion Sonic SE because it is a go nowhere thing.

So 10 pro to 11 pro should be $100 US but it's telling me $248.00 AUD. at the current exchange rate it should be $128.00 AUD, I don't get it. What they are actually charging me is $193.00 US.

What your describing sounds to me like some sort of compressor problem, are there any compressors in the recording signal chain anywhere (software or hardware)? Does the audio interface have one hiding inside it?

Upgrade from 10 to 11 is $238.00 AUD. Not worth me doing at the moment, 10 is running fine and has all I need. The biggest upgrade I could make to my system at the moment is some great, clean and dry acoustic drum samples to run in Battery so I think my money will be going in that direction.